Books: Julia By Peter Straub (1975)

 

“In a house in London a woman starts a new life, trying to put tragedy behind her. Then a pretty blonde child runs into view, bringing with her an inexplicable suggestion of evil. Once Julia Lofting had a husband and a daughter, but everything has changed since she bolted from her marriage, in flight from the unbearable truth of her daughter's death. For Julia, there is no escape. Another child awaits, another mother suffers, and a circle of the damned gathers around her. The haunting has begun.” 

Julia was Peter Straub’s third book, but the first that that touched on supernatural elements. I have generally enjoyed his work, including Ghost Story, Floating Dragon, and many others. I have never read his first two books, which were attempts at mainstream fiction. But what starts out as creepy ride into ghosts and haunted houses soon became an exercise in tedium. This book became a chore to finish, because there is no way a 290 page mass market should’ve taken me this long to finish. I think part of the problem lies in Straub basically answering everything about half-way through the book, forcing me to read on despite my misgivings for as this. Plus all the main characters are unlikable, including Julia (who really comes off as unreliable narrator). So, Julia lost a child, but you never get the sense she is mourning for that loss, which I found distracting. Her husband, Magnus, and sister-in-law Lily are stereotypical English folks, put off by modern things, and speak as if they’re stuck in Masterpiece Theater episode set around 1922. The book is also very dated, with women being portrayed as submissive and as objects, with random killings of animals (for really no reason, other than to show kids can be evil).

It just reminded me why it took all these decades to read Straub’s first foray into the horror genre. It’s gothic to the core, but dull as dishwater.